1. Area of the Art
The present application has to do with specialized generators for electric current by moving a conductor relative to a magnetic source.
2. Description of the Related Art
The present inventor has had extensive experience in the art of magnetic transducers with power generation capability. The reader's attention is drawn to U.S. Pat. No. 6,768,230 (27 Jul. 2004), U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,090 (28 Sep. 2004), U.S. Pat. No. 6,809,427 (26 Oct. 2004), U.S. Pat. No. 6,812,598 (2 Nov. 2004), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,861,772 (1 Mar. 2005) which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. In those patents the present inventor disclosed a number of novel magnetic generation systems wherein one or more magnets were moved relative to a stationary conductor (one or more coils of wire) so that the magnetic lines of flux radiating from the magnets intersect the conductor at right angles and induce electromotive forces (i.e., a flow of electrons) therein. An additional aspect of these patents is that the moving magnets can be disposed on an ultra-low friction ferrofluid bearing system. This allows construction of a generation system wherein the magnets move in response to simple motions such as wave motions in a body of water or the motion of a walking person. Thus, it is possible to construct a generator for personal electronic devices such as a cellular telephone that is capable of keeping the cellular telephone battery charged in response to motion of the device's owner.
However, the moving magnet generator may not always produce as much electrical power as desired. The generation of electricity is accomplished by a relative motion of a magnetic source and a conductor (e.g., a coil). In the above referenced inventions this motion is accomplished by moving magnets relative to a stationary conductor. Now the inventor has discovered advantages in configuration made possible by keeping the magnets relatively stationary while moving the conductor relative to them. The resulting configurations are capable of generating more electrical power in real world practical configurations than the earlier devices.